Barreraicus Maximus

My college roommate, Kali McIver, alerted me to a film he’s been involved with which covers the life and tragic death of Len Bias. BIAS promises to tell the untold, true story of the rise to stardom of a basketball legend. Bias was drafted 2nd overall in the 1986 draft by the NBA Champion Boston Celtics. He was often compared to Michael Jordan and expected to help Boston continue the dynasty led by Larry Bird and Kevin McHale. Unfortunately, just two days after the draft, Bias overdosed on cocaine.

The film is expected to be released in April, check out the trailer.

More so than new players and coaches, I think the Eagles are lacking in the philosophy department. The team is basically built to win games in the first quarter. Watch how they play, they come out immediately passing (nearly every game their first play is a play action). They blitz heavily with the thought to turn the ball over, and have a short field to score. Problem is this isn’t working, and primarily hasn’t since the 2004 magical season. The defense while solid, isn’t changing games. They have 9 forced turnovers this year, which is tied for last in the NFC with Arizona and Atlanta. The offense similarly isn’t changing games. The team’s style has been to pass first, take a few shots down field, and rack up the points early. When the team is rolling this has worked well. Unfortunately, Kevin Curtis and Reggie Brown, aren’t getting open downfield. Ironic thing is the Eagles seem willing to change philosophies…they did down the stretch last year. They changed players on defense and changed the style of attack on offense, by running more and throwing more short routes to receivers and TEs in an effort to increase efficiency. This led to them rattling off a win streak that led to another division title. Unfortunately, the second Donovan McNabb comes back into the lineup, they return to the pass first, deep route style that hasn’t been working. There is a reason they seem to win more with Jeff Garcia and AJ Feeley under center when McNabb is out of the lineup. Reason is they change philosophy. The only time their style worked for long stretches of time, was when Mcnabb, Brian Westbrook and Terrell Owens were in the lineup and healthy.

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The wonders of mergers, how could Adobe screw up acquiring Macromedia’s catalog of quality software. Well, by making it like Adobe Reader. I love Photoshop, great application. I’ve never had a problem with Acrobat, Illustrator etc (in my limited use of them). But Adobe Reader on the other hand is annoyingly slow loading, and often has crashed, especially when in use from a browser. I’ve switched to Foxit Reader, on my Vista, XP, Mac Laptop and Windows Mobile Phone.

Additionally, one of the hot trends among software developers is auto updates. I HATE THEM. They have become an unnecessary evil. Problem with these packages is they prompt you to download and install upon launching the software. So picture yourself on a deadline, and you pop open Photoshop and it prompts you if you’d like to install an update for Illustrator. Sure you tell the software, remind me later, and it will remind you. Isn’t that sweet. Firefox does a decent job of updates, although the quick string of 2.0.7 to 2.0.8 to 2.0.9 was a bit annoying, but at least it is fast. CS3 often needs to download large packages, as does Apple’s QuickTime/ITunes. I just want to listen to some music, not download a 70 mb updater. Another trend is services. Apple has Bonjour, which they now have partnered with Adobe to use as a communication tool with Version Cue. Great….if I used Version Cue. So hence I have a running service, which apparently I cannot stop. Oh, Apple, I do love you…but I don’t have an iPod, iPhone, iTouch, iAnything, but you insist on my having the iPod service. Thanks. Services have been a notorious cause of slow running computers, and because many of these now come from “established” companies, tools like Windows Defender, Adaware etc, don’t really care about them.

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The Dallas Cowboys are on the Philadelphia Eagles schedule twice per season, and each time the team’s records could be thrown out. From a Philly fans’ perspective this is nearly as big a game as a playoff game. All the bad feelings about the team early in the season, would suddenly disappear if the Eagles win. Hating the Cowboys is deep rooted. I was just a toddler during their late 70s early 80s great years. But I knew even before they became a dynasty in the 90s that I hated the Cowboys. In the 1989 Thanksgiving day game, forever known as the “Bounty Bowl”, Eagles linebacker Jessie Small concussed Cowboys kicker Luis Zendejas. The Cowboys claimed there was a bounties on hard hits causing injuries in the game. Today, this couldn’t happen. The league is certainly too mindful of it’s reputation to allow this to happen. These were the kind of things that happened in the rivalry. Sad thing for me as an Eagles fan is that the Cowboys fans don’t see it that way. It is almost just another NFC East rival to them. For an Eagles fan though, this is it. And if most of them had their way, Tony Romo, Terrell Owens et. al would have bounties on them. The Cowboys typify the in crowd, the popular, attractive, wealthy, smart kids from the top high school. The Eagles on the other hand, are the outsiders, the kids who go to the run down high school, who fight for everything they ever have, and for the most part they don’t have much.

Well hopefully for one week, the city will be happy and have some hope. If not it will be back to misery.

My colleagues at Princeton and I collaborated on a conference report for Code4Lib 2007 for Library Hi Tech News (vol 24, issue 6). Actually for the most part they wrote it and I compiled their work.

Here’s the link: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/07419050710823247

Thanks to Parmit Chilana, Kevin Clarke and Mike Giarlo for working on this.